One Magnolia teenager killed, one critically injured in Tuesday wreck

Tiffany Williams

Published 6:00 pm, Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Cody Griffith, 18, died after his 1996 Honda Accord veered off the road and into a pole in the median as he was driving north on Texas 242 toward FM 1488 around 2:20 a.m. The vehicle was traveling at high speeds, although not recklessly, said Gregory Carter, chief of the Needham Fire Department.

Officials found Griffith and passenger Trey Haynes, 18, trapped in the car, said DPS Sgt. Pat Hernandez. The pole went directly into the front center of the car, dislodging the engine block and forcing it into the passenger side, Hernandez said. Officials pronounced Griffith dead at the scene.

"He died on impact," said DPS Cpl. Angela Fountain, the first responder at the scene.

"If you can imagine, the entire front of the car exploded," she said. "It was probably the worst damage I've seen in about 10 years."

Fountain said the boys were not wearing seatbelts, and when a deputy went to notify Haynes' parents, they indicated he snuck out of the house.

Carter said it took firefighters about 2-1/2 hours, four apparatuses and 15 personnel to remove Griffith and Haynes from the car's clutch.

"This was very complicated," Carter said. "It's not a simple case of cut the roof off or take the door off. We had to strategically place the cuts so we could get the patient out without further injury."

He said Haynes was coherent enough to respond when rescuers asked him questions before he was taken via LifeFlight helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston. He was listed in critical condition Tuesday.

Carter said the teens had been eating at a restaurant. They were traveling home when the wreck occurred.

He said he noticed the driver's-side airbag had deployed, but because of the damage, he could not tell whether the passenger side had.

Griffith attended Magnolia High School until his senior year, when he obtained his GED. He worked delivering pizza at Figaro's Pizza in The Woodlands and lived with his parents at home, said his mother, Terry Griffith, who learned about the wreck about 4 a.m.

She said her son used his car frequently and always believed it to be a reliable mode of transportation.

He leaves behind his mother, his father Wendell and 25-year-old sister Angela.

Terry Griffith described her son as "low-key" and "beautiful and tall with dark eyes."

She said her son and Haynes had been friends for at least a year.

"He was a wonderful person," she said. "He had a good bit of friends. He had a real trusting, outgoing personality toward anyone he met. Cody was always so respectful of his grandmother and me."

She said the family is making arrangements to have a funeral ceremony at a nearby funeral home, although she is still unsure which one. She said she wants Cody's friends to have the opportunity to pay their respects.

"I could not have asked for a better son than the one I had for 18 years," she said.

Griffith became the 10th traffic-related fatality in Montgomery County this year.